


Bittersweet Tragedy

by checkerboardom



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, ReverseVibe If You Squint, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-11 01:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5607910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkerboardom/pseuds/checkerboardom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's Cisco!"</p>
<p>He stops. Everything stops.</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>Or that AU where Zoom kills Cisco because I enjoy making myself cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. If I Could Buy Forever

"You need to let me out." He tries to keep his voice as controlled as possible when he says it, but even he can hear the toxic mix of anger and fear hiding behind his words. Joe looks less than impressed.

 

"You keep saying that," The detective points out, hands perched on his hips and there is no time for this. "And you haven't given me a good reason why I should."

 

"Because those children will die if you don't." Eobard snaps back, fist smacking the glass of his cell before he turns away again. He hates this, being locked away while his children face down a monster under the guidance of an impostor. "Do you truly think he knows how to defeat Zoom? After all the times he's failed?"

 

"We're trying something new. Cisco--"

 

No. Not now, not before he's ready. "Cisco needs training, propper training."

 

"Like Barry did?" Joe asks and Eobard snarls.

 

"I made him faster. I made him what he is and you will let me do the same for Cisco before you get him killed." He tells him and Joe looks at him for a moment that seems like an eternity, face utterly unreadable.

 

"I'll look after him." He promises, one father to another, and Eobard takes it as the acknowledgement of his love that it is. But it's still not enough, it'll never be enough when it comes to Cisco's safety, so he says nothing.

 

Joe leaves without a backward glance.

...

 

It takes longer for Cisco to visit him than he expects. Last time it was a day at most, now it's two and just like before he puts a safe distance between them despite the glass.

 

"I won't hurt you, you know." Eobard tells him and Cisco flinches.

 

"Not while you're in there." He shoots back and Eobard wonders if he's being purposefully obtuse or if he truly has changed that much since they were last here.

 

"Not ever." Regardless of the answer he cant have Cisco operating under the assumption that he is the enemy this time. He needs him to remember that it's Barry that's at fault here, that it was Joe's mistake in dragging Cisco into his investigation that brought about his death, that Eobard wouldn't have killed him out of anything but necessity.

 

For a moment, he thinks that Cisco has gotten the message, but then his lips curl into a wry smile and he shakes his head. "Would you have been able to say that while shredding my heart too? Or are we overlooking that?"

 

Eobard closes his eyes for a moment and lets the raw pain in those words wash over him. He has a lot of work to do in regards to gaining Cisco's trust again and none of that is going to be possible while he's locked in here like an animal.

 

"I never overlooked you, Cisco." He'll mend what he can for now. "Not for Barry, not for Caitlin, not for anyone."

 

"But I just wasn't important enough for you to stay either." Cisco adds. "I was convenient to use and easy to discard once you got the opportunity for something better. I get it."

 

He doesn't, and Eobard has to wonder who hurt his boy while he was gone. Who was responsible for the new crack in Cisco's confidence after the spider web of fractures that he put there himself? Who pushed Cisco back into the corner of perceived inadequacy that Eobard had spent years coaxing him out of?

 

He doubts Cisco will tell him and he can't put up a defense against the truth of Cisco's words either. He'd give anything to be home again. To breath in the pollution free air of his electric city and see the stark realness of its architecture instead of the squat, ugly houses of this time.

 

Cisco must see it in his eyes, that longing for home, because he looks down and away as he seals the pipeline closed again and Eobard gives him the courtesy of pretending he didn't see the shimmer of tears on his lashes.

 

...

 

The other Harrison visits him next, face unreadable even as he practically struts into the room outside of his cell. He looks more like this body than the actual Harrison Wells did, dressed in black with cold blue eyes where the original Wells' had been warm.

 

"So you're the reason they all hate me." He greets and Eobard doesn't bother in offering him a smile.

 

"I think that was more of your own personality flaws than mine." He can tell that this Harrison is colder than the other one had been, head held high in pride despite the fact that Eobard knows more than he could ever hope to. The knowledge of it must be there, the unmistakable truth that Eobard will always be better than him due to the simple fact that he was born in a future he can't even dream of. The fact that he knows STAR Labs and it's team better than either Harrison ever could because he made them. And he'll be damned if he lets this man take any of them from him. "You can't train him."

 

The other Harrison jumps on the balls of his feet a little. Whether or not it's nervous energy making itself known or Harry fighting the urge to leave, he's not sure, but Eobard waits for him to respond nonetheless.

 

"Why?" He asks, meeting his gaze and keeping it.

 

"Because you know nothing about him or his powers. You have no idea what it's like to feel the electricity of the speed force rushing through your veins. You have no understanding of what it's like to love a child that can never truly be yours." He stops and lets his lips quirk into a smile. "Or do you?"

 

Wells doesn't rise to the bait. "You're protecting him."

 

"Just like you would concerning your Jesse... Quick." He watches as his doppelganger goes rigid and knows that he's finally hit the right mark. "Zoom has her and you want her back. I can help you, but not from within this box."

 

"And not without Cisco's help." Wells adds and it's his turn to smile now. "You're not the only one of us that would do anything to save his child. You just lost your chance when you killed yours."

 

...

 

It's Caitlin that visits him last, eyes wide in fear as she punches in the security override to his cell with shaking fingers. There's frost crawling up her arms and the tear tracks on her cheeks are frozen.

 

"Dr Wells." She says and shudders. Her lips are turning blue. "Eobard, whoever you are, I need you to fix this."

 

He gives her a gentle smile as he steps out of his cell, but makes no move to touch her. She wouldn't want him to and he's never been particularly fond of frostbite. "We'll have to stabilize your body temperature." He tells her as he goes through a mental checklist of all the ways this particular superpower could kill her.

 

"It's not me--"

 

There are plenty, but the most urgent would be frost in her blood and onset of hyperthermia. "And run a blood test to make sure the frost--"

 

"It's Cisco!"

 

He stops.

 

Everything stops.

 

"What?"

 

"We were training him and he finally reached a stable frequency,  but Zoom showed up through the Portal and something went wrong!" Her chest is rising and falling in quick, panicked breathes as she speaks."Please, I can't--" She stops and chokes down a breath. "I can't lose him too, not after Ronnie."

 

"Ronnie?" He asks, then shakes his head because that doesn't matter right now. Later, if she allows him, he'll comfort her like he had before and find out exactly what happened. For now, "Where is he?"

 

She leads him to the room that had previously housed the containment cell. It's now home to the pulsating blue pool of the portal between the two worlds, but he spares it little notice. He'd spent enough time stuck between the universes to know that he never wants to see it again.

 

No, his focus goes straight to the crumpled form on the ground, limbs splayed like a marionette doll with its strings cut. "Move!"

 

 The alternate Flash, Jay, and his doppleganger comply, but Barry and Joe don't.

 

Within seconds there's a gun pointed at his chest as the detective glares him down, but Barry doesn't take his attention from where his palms are pressed to Cisco's chest, hands vibrating as he tries to stabilize him. 

 

"Let me through." He demands, glancing at Joe for the briefest of seconds. "Let me through, West!"

 

"Joe!" Barry calls and the gun is lowered. He drops to his knees across from the other speedster and is surprised by the lack of hostility he finds in his expression. Instead he gets a flicker of relief covered quickly by stark fear and indecision.

 

"What do I do?" He asks, voice breaking as Cisco's body flickers like static.

 

"What's his displacement?" He needs more information before he can help, but at the sound of his voice Cisco goes that much more solid.

 

"Positive. I-- It's positive." Caitlin tells him as she joins the three of them on the ground and Eobard nods before turning to Barry.

 

"Get the frequency meter from Cisco's toolbox." Barry hesitates for the briefest of seconds, glances to Cait for reassurance, then leaves in a streak of red light. He's back seconds later, the meter clutched on his hand like a lifeline. "Measure him. I need his frequency."

 

The meter comes to life with a high pitched whine and Cisco shudders, curling away from the sound.  "216 Hertz."

 

"He should be at 84. That's the stable frequency for a meta-human, 72 for a normal human. We don't have the equipment to bring it back down."

 

"We cant... send a vibration through him to stabilize him?" Barry asks and his voice is already starting to break. "There has to be something!"

 

"If we send a vibration through him and it's the wrong one he could shake apart into nothing." Eobard tells him and looks to Caitlin. "Take Mr. Garrick and prep one of the testing rooms. They're built to be sound proof and as of right now, they're the best chance we have at keeping Cisco stable until we can reverse whatever Zoom's done."

 

They leave and Barry goes with them once Eobard reassures him that Cisco will survive until he can be transported. After that it's just West, Wells, and himself. "What happened?"

 

"What happened every other time?" Wells snaps, steps heavy and quick as he paces the floor.

 

"What Dr... Wells is trying to say is that Zoom showed up out of nowhere and did this." Joe supplies and it doesn't make sense. Why would Zoom turn up out of the blue in the heart of STAR Labs? Why now of all times?

 

"You didn't set a trap? You weren't trying to lure him in in any way?" He asks and Joe shakes his head, gaze fixed to where Cisco has curled in on himself in an attempt to stay together.

 

Eobard ignores him and focuses his attention on his boy. "What did he do?"

 

"Disrupted the frequency." His voice echoes from all around the room, words coming from different directions as the vibrations traveling through his body sends each sound he emits into the air around them. "I tried to hold it in but... I wasn't prepared and I couldn't... focus."

 

"And Barry?" Eobard asks, voice soft as he pulls Cisco closer. "Did he go after him or any of the others?"

 

The boy shakes his head and gives a shuddering sigh. "No. He left afterwards. Just me. I tried--"

 

"You're brilliant Cisco." He tells him and Cisco smiles. "You did everything you could."

 

"But I wasn't good enough, not when it mattered." He looks over to Joe. "Tell Barry I'm sorry that I couldn't do more."

 

Joe looks pained, shoulders rigid as he shakes his head. "You can tell him yourself, kid. You're gonna be fine."

 

Cisco nods, another shiver passing through him as he fades even more. "I really wanted to save Jesse, ya' know. Be a hero instead of the guy that ran recon from behind a computer."

 

"You're much more than that." Eobard reassures. "Remember that no matter what. You've always been incredibly clever Cisco."

 

"Not that clever." Cisco replies and Eobard closes his eyes at the pain that statement brings.

 

When he opens them again Cisco is gone and Eobard is left holding empty air.


	2. I Would Buy It Twice

They've just finished prepping one of the observation rooms in the upper east level when Joe appears in the doorway with shuffling steps.

 

It's like the entire room knows in that moment, a hush falling as Barry looks to his adopted father with a hopeful expression. It dies quickly when he sees the tears in his eyes and it's like someone's wrapped a fist around his heart.

 

Behind him glass shatters as Caitlin loses her grip on the rack of test tubes that she'd been moving out of the way. "No." She breaths, then louder as the temperature in the room drops. "No! He was going to be okay. He was..."

 

Her words choke off into a sob and it's only Barry's speed that allows him to catch her as she falls. She too cold due to the lack of control over her powers, but he holds on nonetheless, grip tightening as her body shakes.

 

"I can't lose him too." She says around another sob and Barry looks to Joe for something, anything, a lie if this is really the truth that they have to share.

 

"I'm sorry, kiddo." He says and Barry feels his own eyes grow hot.

 

"Jay." He calls and the other speedster takes Barry's place in comforting Caitlin so that he can see for himself.

 

He's down in the Portal room in seconds lighting crackling around him as he spies Harry pacing a furious hole into the floor, then further, to the figure of Eobard curled around empty air.

 

"What did you do?" He demands and it's louder than he expects it to be, furious and grief stricken as he wraps his fists into Eobard's shirt. Thawne looks down at him with steady blue eyes and doesn't bat a lash as his back meets the far wall with too much force.

 

"I didn't do anything." He responds, voice quiet in the air between them and Barry shakes at the unbridled grief that he hears. "He's gone."

 

"No he's not." Barry insists, because he can fix this. He knows he can.

 

He drops Thawne and is gone before he even hits the ground, the world slowing to a crawl around him as the wind sucks all the sound from his ears. Lapping the city in a blur of red and gold light, he counts the seconds and clocks his speed.

 

He passes mach one by the third lap, then mach two on the eighth and mach two point five on the twelfth and--

 

'Barry!'

 

He phases through a building, then a car, and comes to a rolling stop in the dockyards, slamming into a shipping container with too much force.

 

"Cisco?" He calls, head snapping up as his name echoes through the air around him. He can feel the tears coming, throat tightening as they prickle at the edge of his vision. "I'm sorry."

 

"It's not your fault." And that's Iris' voice, gentle and calm through his ear piece.

 

"Iris, I heard him." He tells her and he must sound crazy, but he knows he did. He knows.

 

"Okay," She tells him and his breath shudders in his chest as he chokes back a sob.

 

"I heard him." He repeats, tears finally slipping free and it's like a dam is broken, something hollow opening up in his chest as he kneels in the gravel and cries. He can barely hear Iris' voice over his own grief, words drowned out as his tears patter onto the ground below and the rocks dig into his knees.

 

He isn't sure how long he cries, isn't sure how long Iris spends murmuring quiet words into the mic. She doesn't ask if he's okay, doesn't try to reassure him that everything will be fine, because she knows that it wont be any help and a part of him aches like it did the night he went back to save his mom.

 

"I wasn't fast enough. I should've been able to do something, should've helped him more." He tells her and she makes a soft noise in denial.

 

"This isn't your fault, Bar. This is on Zoom, not you." She tells him and he pulls in a few more hiccupping breaths as he gets to his feet.

 

"Then we'll stop Zoom and get Cisco back. He's not gone." He needs that last part not to be a lie, needs to believe that there's something that he can do to fix this, because the alternative is something that he cant live with. Not after Eddie and Ronnie and his mom, not this time.

 

...

 

 

Whatever she does, Caitlin can't seem to stop crying. There are moments when it slows, times where her eyes dry enough for her to gain a respite from her grief, before it all comes flooding back and her throat tightens around a sound that's more of a pained cry than a sob.

 

It's like Ronnie all over again, like the pain she had felt when she'd had to face the reality of a life without her fiance in it. It's loss and a grief deadened part of her wishes that she didn't have to feel it.

Jay's gone too. Not because he wants to be, but because her powers have finally pushed him away. The more she cries, the colder it becomes and he'd finally left after his lips started to turn blue. There's frost coating the floor around her, lapping at the walls and sending whisps of grey-white into the air with each breath and she's so utterly alone here.

 

"I'm sorry." She whispers, hands pressed to her chest to banish the ache there. "I'm so sorry."

 

'...Cait...'

 

"Cisco?!" Her head snaps up at the sound of his voice, hands scrambling to push herself up from the floor so that she can hug him--

 

But he's not there.

 

He's not there and everything is too cold.

 

...

 

"I see you've finally stopped pacing a hole into the floor." Eobard observes as Harry stalks into Cisco's workroom in a bundle of black clothing. There's a gun slung over his shoulder and Eobard has to wonder what exactly he thinks he's going to do with it.

 

"And you have yet to be put back in your cage." Harry sneers and Eobard laughs, quick and humorless. "What do want?"

 

"Answers." And Eobard's ever-present smile is gone now, washed away as he pins Harry in place with cold, blue eyes. "Why would Zoom show up during Cisco's training?"

 

"Why does Zoom do anything that he does?" Harry returns, shoulders tight as he glares Eobard down. "Why did Zoom kidnap my daughter? Why did Zoom attack Barry? Why did Zoom kill Cisco? Why do you think that I know?"

 

His voice rises sharply on the last sentence, becoming a yell, but Eobard refuses to be cowed. "Why do you think?" He rises from his chair and steps closer, close enough that he's on the edge of Harry's personal space as he stares him down. Then he smiles, bright and sharp as a knife. "You're the expert on our speed demon, after all."

 

'He told him about me.'

 

Eobard freezes, eyes going wide as he takes a step back. Harry narrows his eye at him. "What, you don't have anything else to say?"

 

"Shut up." Eobard says, quick and viscous as he listens for Cisco's voice.

 

'It was the only way to get Jesse back.' It comes again, soft and right in his ear as he tilts his head to the side. 'She's all alone. I can't help her.'

 

"Cisco?" He asks and shakes his head when he doesn't get a reply, turning to Wells with barely restrained impatience. "Where's Dr. Snow?"

 

"Crying in one of the storage rooms. Why?"

 

"Because I need her to run a brain scan on me." Eobard says as he leaves the room and Harry follows after him with a string of curses falling from his lips.

 

...

 

Caitlin looks him over with grim diligence. Her eyes are red rimmed and she's afraid to touch him for obvious reasons, but eventually they come up with the scans that Eobard was hoping for. An image of his brain is put up on the main screen, lit up in different colors to give them a better picture of what exactly he's looking for.

 

"That spot there, what is it?" Joe asks, waving a hand toward the screen. He hasn't looked at Eobard since he arrived in the Cortex during the beginning of his exam. Barry is standing at his side and seems likewise willing to ignore Eobard completely.

 

Eobard clears his throat. "That is the only link we have to bringing Cisco back."

 

"That's impossible." Harry says and the room drops by ten degrees due to Eobard's glare alone. That and the telling tremble in Caitlin's hands as her emotions surge and beckon ice along with them. "People don't come back after Zoom kills them."

 

"Need I remind you that there is a time traveler and a biomedical engineer in this room, neither of which are you." Eobard snaps back and Barry holds up a hand.

 

"How?" He asks, hand moving to his chin as he looks the brain scans over.

 

It's Caitlin who answers this time, a hand coming up to gesture at the bright blue group of neorons in Eobard's brain structure. "This section right here is what's known as the BA-41 sector of the auditory cortex of the human brain. It's responsible for registering tonality. Normally any kind of auditory stimulation would cause the firing of synapses here as well as in the BA-42 sector before it's cataloged by the short term memory receptors."

 

"And plain English for the rest of us?" Joe asks, tilting his head toward Eobard. "What does this have to do with getting Cisco back?"

 

"It's the part of the brain that registers different frequencies, but from what I can see, the stimuli that's being brought in isn't from an outside source, at least not one that the secondary auditory system is picking up."

 

"So he's hearing voices that aren't actually there." Barry concludes and Harry snorts.

 

"If, and it's a big if, he's actually hearing Cisco wherever he is, how does that help us get Cisco back?" Joe asks again and Eobard feels a small swell of gratitude at his single minded focus.

 

"It gives us the knowledge that Cisco is operating on a specific frequency instead of no longer existing. Our next step is to isolate the frequency that Cisco is using to speak and contain it long enough for him to manifest."

 

"Like an electromagnetic field that emits enough energy for Cisco to use to pull himself back into existence." Jay volunteers and the room temperature rises slightly as Caitlin beams.

 

"The containment cell." Joe adds with a snap of his fingers and Barry gives him a curious look. "What? It's not like I just stand around twiddling my thumbs when you all nerd out over your toys."

 

"No, the cell could work." Eobard allows, nodding his head in Joe's direction. The detective's expression sours a little, arms crossing over his chest as he narrows his eyes.

 

"Don't think that you're not going to end up back in the pipeline once we get him back."

 

Eobard smiles. "I wouldn't dream of it. Now," He looks to Caitlin. "I believe we had something to talk about."

 

Caitlin's brows knit together for the barest of moments before her eyes flicker to the frost that's steadily licking at the floor around her feet. "Oh, I--"

 

"You can continue picking my brain for Cisco's frequency displacement while Mr. Garrick and... Dr. Wells work on reversing the magnetic polarity of the containment cell."

 

"What am I supposed to do?" Barry asks as everyone begins to leave the Cortex and Joe hikes his thumb toward the elevator.

 

"Time for a patrol, kiddo."

 

Barry groans.

 

...

 

"What happened?" Eobard asks once they're alone again, watching as ice washes up the skin of Caitlin's forearms like tiny waves lapping at the shoreline of the ocean. There are patterns there, crystalline snowflakes that swirl and fade with each moment and the next.

 

"A run-in with a meta-human." Caitlin tells him, hands careful as she presses an electrode to his temple. It's cool to the touch, but there's no sting of frostbite, no tingling nerves at the negative temperature that she emits naturally now. "I got locked in a freezer for longer than I'd ever like to admit."

 

"And Barry?"

 

Caitlin looks up sharply. "What about him?"

 

"What did he do?" Eobard clarifies and Caitlin's expression goes guarded.

 

"If you're looking for a reason to blame him, you're not going to get one." She tells him and when she presses the next electrode to his skin there's a sting of discomfort that comes along with it.

 

"Then why did he take so long to get you out?" Eobard replies and Caitlin clenches her hands into fists, ice dripping from her knuckles as she takes a deep breath.

 

"Because I was being used as a distraction and he needed to save the actual targets." She says in a tight voice and Eobard hums.

 

"You weren't important enough to save first, you mean."

 

'Stop.' Eobard's shoulders go rigid as Cisco's voice echoes through his mind. The image of his brain structure flashes like lightning before going dark again.

 

"You're so set on protecting Barry that you'll make excuses for his poor choice in priorities." Eobard continues and the temperature in the room drops enough that the hair on his arms raise.

 

"Barry is my friend." Caitlin snaps and her words come out in little white puffs of heat in the frigid air. "Stop trying to turn me against him."

 

"Says the one that he left locked in a freezer." Eobard remarks and the screens to his right light up like a Christmas tree as Cisco's voice echoes around the room.

 

'Shut up!' It's loud and clear despite the fact that he doesn't actually exist and for a moment Eobard feels triumphant.

 

Then Caitlin sucks in a sharp breath and the room explodes in a flurry of frost. It washes over everything in a furious storm, crawling up the walls like silver-white flames and stealing the breath from his lungs. It's like being plunged into a frozen lake and at its center stands Caitlin, mouth open in a startled gasp as her eyes bleed electric blue and the last strands of brown are bleached from her hair.

 

"What did you do?" She demands and for once her emotions don't send her powers into upheaval.

 

"You needed an outlet for your abilities. I provided one." Eobard tells her and he almost stutters over his words as he rubs the warmth back into his arms. "Why did you think your ice manifested when your emotions were high? You were bottling them up and every time you lost your grip on them, they rebelled."

 

Caitlin looks horrified. "I could have killed you. I could've killed everyone in the lab!"

 

'Ooooh, Killer Frost!' Cisco volunteers and Caitlin looks over at the screens.

 

"What did he say?" She asks and Eobard's lips quirk up into a smile.

 

"I believe he just gave you your meta-human nickname." He tells her and when Caitlin laughs it's high and a little wet as her eyes go misty with tears.

 

"Thank you, Cisco." She says and for the briefest of moments she swears that she can see him standing besides Eobard, smile bright and infectious. She smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk what this is tbh

**Author's Note:**

> I am a ball of emotions right now. I am so sorry!


End file.
